inedia (breatharianism)

"I tried
breatharianism once, except I thought it was called anorexia." --Oshinn
Cerra

Inedia is the alleged ability to live without food. Some inediates become breatharians, like the stigmatic
Therese Neumann (1898-1962) of Bavaria, who said “one can live on the Holy
Breath alone.” She claims to have done this from 1926-1962, during which
time she says she only consumed her daily serving of transubstantiated
bread.

Today,
extreme fasting is usually done to lose weight for reasons of health or
vanity. Fasting for vanity can be unhealthy, as is obvious in the case of
those who are said to suffer from the psychiatric disorder anorexia nervosa.
In earlier centuries, however, fasting was usually associated with the
supernatural or the paranormal. In the nineteenth-century, for example,
there were enough cases of extreme fasting by females to call them "fasting
girls."

Fasting has long been considered a way to purify one’s body and mind.
Fasting reminds us of our dependence and weakness, and links us to those who
suffer hunger as part of their daily lives. Inediates strive to be spiritual
beings and carry fasting to an inhuman level. If restraint, self-control,
and reducing one’s intake of food and water are good, then eliminating all
physical nourishment must be better. Spiritual beings don’t need food,
water, or sleep. Maybe so, but food,
water and sleep are not optional for human beings.

Greve claims she hasn’t eaten since 1993; yet, she admits “she drinks
herbal teas and confesses to the occasional ‘taste orgasm’ involving
chocolate or ice cream” (Sunday Times Online UK, Sept. 26, 1999).
She also admits “if I feel a bit bored and I want some flavour, then I will
have a mouthful of whatever it is I’m wanting the flavour of. So it might be
a piece of chocolate or it might be a mouthful of a cheesecake or something
like that.”*
Several interviewers have found her house full of food, but she claims the
food is for her husband, who once went to prison for misappropriating a
pension fund. Apparently he hasn’t seen the light and is unable to live on
prana yet (Walker
and O’Reilly 1999).

Greve runs the Cosmic
Internet Academy (C.I.A.) and claims to have 5,000 followers
worldwide. People pay over $2,000 to attend her seminars. There are many,
apparently, who are not bothered by the contradiction of saying one needs
only prana (or is it light?) but admits to the odd sweet and cup of tea, and
has a house full of food. This “diet” is changing her chromosomes, she says.
Her “DNA is changing to take up more hydrogen and is developing from 2 to 12
strands.”*
Greve also claims that the starving of the world would be just fine if they
could only be “re-programmed”. They starve to death, she says, because the
mass media has tricked them into thinking they need food.*
Such gibberish would get some people into treatment; instead, she makes
world tours promoting her book. At least three of Greve’s followers have starved
to death while trying to purify themselves with total fasting. Despite
the dangerousness of her insane teachings, in the fall of 1999, the
Australian television program
“60 Minutes” tested her ability to live on prana, the “light of God [sic].”

After Greve had fasted for four days, Dr. Berris Wink, president of the Queensland
branch of the Australian Medical Association, urged her to stop the test.
According to the doctor, Greve’s pupils were dilated, her speech was slow,
she was dehydrated, and her pulse had doubled. The doctor feared kidney
damage if she continued with the fast. The test was stopped. Greve claimed
that she failed because on the first day of the test she had been confined
in a hotel room near a busy road, which kept her from getting the nutrients
she needs from the air. “I asked for fresh air. Seventy per cent of my
nutrients come from fresh air. I couldn’t even breathe,” she said. However,
the last three days of the test took place at a mountainside retreat where
she could get plenty of fresh air and where she claimed she could now live
happily.*
Clearly, had the test continued, she would have died. Instead, she lived to
lead others to their deaths.

Another inspiration for breatharianism is
Wiley
Brooks, who heads The Breatharian
Institute of America. For the past thirty years or so, Brooks has
been claiming that we don’t need food, water, or sleep. He asks “if food is
so good for you, how come the body keeps trying to get rid of it?...Man was
not designed to be a garbage can.” He claims that adepts and yogis have been
living on air for millennia. Brooks offers workshops to train people in the
art of living on air. In the beginning, he charged
$500 for these workshops; at one point he was asking for $10,000,000
and promising to increase the fee to $25,000,000 in January 2008.
In May of
2010, he was charging $100,000. I'm sure that includes all meals. Brooks may seem to have lost his mind but
he hasn't lost his sense of humor.

Unfortunately, the belief that we can live without food continues to
spread. A sixty-four-year-old retired mechanical engineer from India,
Hira Ratan Manek, claims that he
lives on boiled water and energy from the sun. In effect, he claims he's
turned his body into a photovoltaic cell that converts the rays of the sun
into nutritional energy. As would be expected in this age of faith-based
gullibility, Manek has a cult following,
as does Tapaswi
Palden Dorje (Ram Bahadur Bomjan) whose followers claim that he has not
eaten or drunk water since he was bitten by a poisonous snake on November 6,
2005. Palden Dorje's followers believe
the snake bite gave him enlightenment as evidence by a bright light they saw
coming from their guru's head. It is claimed that since he got enlightened,
the guru does nothing but meditate for world peace. He has been just as
effective as all his brethren in the West who have been praying for world
peace for centuries.

All witnesses claimed that
Guru neither ate, drank, or left to relieve himself. He just sat and
meditated under the pipal tree. Baffled onlookers were ever
increasing. There were stories of miracles: a girl and a young man had
gained the power of speech although they could not speak.

Dr. Shah has been
in charge of three similar investigations over the past ten
years, and he has never allowed independent verification. In
2000, he was asking for funds to investigate a man he claimed
got his energy from the sun, just like plants do. In 2003, he
even approached NASA for funds to investigate Mr. Jani,
claiming astronauts might benefit from the research. This
particular hospital, led by this particular doctor, keeps on
making these claims without ever producing evidence or
publishing research.

Allegedly, India's
military is interested in Jani because he may hold the key to
helping soldiers survive longer without food.

update: Naveena Shine has stopped her experiment in living on water, tea, and light alone. The universe, she believes, wants her to eat so she can pay the bills. Her 47-day effort obviously has had no detrimental effect on her ability to think clearly. She derided scientists (and ordinary people with a basic knowledge of physiology) for not grasping how the human body doesn't need food and can exist on light alone. She leaves the center of attention for now with this parting shot: "From the feedback I am getting, it is becoming patently clear that most of the world is by no means ready to receive the information I am attempting to produce. Even if it were true that a person can 'live on light' and I were successful in demonstrating that, I see that it would be synonymous with putting a non-driver behind the wheel of a huge truck. It would be an accident in the making." She's seen the light and the light tells her the world's not ready for the light. This would be funny if she didn't believe her rationalizations were true and if the Guardian didn't feel the need to explain to readers that humans lack chloroplasts and aren't plants.

Yogi beaten by bear necessities of life without food "I don't believe
it's real," says Australian nutritionist Professor Peter Clifton, a
co-author of the Total Wellbeing Diet book....Bears are one example
of mammals that fatten themselves up before going into a dormant state,
Professor Clifton says...."But yogis don't generally have fat stores like a
bear."